Human Rights of Accused, Victims and Prisoners (UGC-NET Unit V)

The presumption of innocence is the organising principle of the trial stage. The prosecution must prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and until it does, the accused is treated as innocent for every purpose, including bail decisions. ICCPR Article 14(2) states this directly, and in India the Supreme Court has read the same guarantee into due process under Article 21 of the Constitution.

Legal aid makes the presumption of innocence usable rather than formal. In M.H. Hoskot v State of Maharashtra (1978), the Supreme Court held that free legal aid to an indigent accused is part of a reasonable, fair and just procedure under Article 21, and Article 39A of the Constitution directs the state to provide it.

Speedy trial serves the same purpose from a different angle: it stops the process itself from becoming the punishment, a principle the Supreme Court read into Article 21 in Hussainara Khatoon v State of Bihar (1979).

The right against self-incrimination bars compelling a person to be a witness against themselves. Article 20(3) of the Indian Constitution states this as a fundamental right. NET questions on this section usually pair a right with the constitutional article or the international provision that anchors it, so keep Articles 20 to 22 and ICCPR Articles 9 and 14 straight.

A criminal trial has traditionally been framed as the state against the accused, with the victim appearing only as a witness. Victim participation recognises that the person harmed has a stake in the outcome beyond giving testimony, including being heard on questions such as bail and the framing of charges, and in some systems on sentencing.

For NET purposes, treat victim rights as the counterpart to accused rights rather than a competing set of guarantees: fair-trial protections for the accused and a meaningful role for the victim are both part of the same due-process picture, and a syllabus question that asks you to distinguish them is testing whether you can separate whose interest each guarantee protects.

Article 22 of the Constitution of India requires that an arrested person be told the grounds of arrest and be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours, excluding travel time.

The remedy behind this and every similar time limit is habeas corpus, a writ compelling whoever holds a person to bring them before a court and justify the detention. Articles 32 and 226 of the Indian Constitution let a person petition the Supreme Court or a High Court directly, and ICCPR Article 9(4) restates the same guarantee internationally.

Custody, whether under police interrogation or judicial remand, is where the prohibition of torture matters most, because oversight is lowest. ICCPR Article 7 states the prohibition directly, and the UN Convention Against Torture requires states parties to criminalise torture and prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In India, the Supreme Court laid down binding procedural safeguards against custodial abuse in D.K.

Basu v State of West Bengal (1997), including a witnessed memo of arrest, informing a relative of the arrest, and periodic medical examination. The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, in force since 1 July 2024 in place of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, carries several of these safeguards into statute.

A conviction ends the presumption of innocence for that case but does not suspend a prisoner's basic human rights. The international benchmark is the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, first adopted in 1955 and comprehensively revised and renamed the Nelson Mandela Rules by UN General Assembly Resolution 70/175 in 2015. The Rules cover accommodation, hygiene, medical care, disciplinary limits, and a ban on prolonged solitary confinement, defined as confinement for more than 15 consecutive days.

Indian courts have read humane conditions of confinement into Article 21's guarantee of life and personal liberty, and the same reasoning extends to work inside prison and to parole, a conditional early release under supervision treated as part of reformative rather than purely retributive punishment. For NET, the line to hold is: pre-trial and trial rights turn on the presumption of innocence, while post-conviction rights turn on humane treatment and reform, not on innocence.